host the two leading third-party candidates for president, the green party candidate in than the libertarian party candidate jo jordgensen at 9:00 a.m. eastern. the group new america looked at voting technology and the potential for voting by smart phone or computer in the future. this is just over an hour. >> thanks for joining us today. my name is jane hu. i'm a journalist and a journalist and contributor to future tense. future tense is a collaboration between arizona state university, new america, and slate that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. i will be monitoring our conversation, and i am pleased to be joined by kevin collier, a reporter at nbc news and larry norden, the director of the election reform program at the brennan center for justice.

just a reminder, if you have questions as we chat, feel free to drop them into the chat below. voting is on everyone's mind at the moment, and with coronavirus, more voters than ever are trying mail-in ballots or voting early. ith coronavirus, more voters than ever are trying mail-in ballots or voting early. alternatives to our usual voting methods, a lot of people are asking will voting become digital, as well? thent to kick off conversation by asking, why would we even want online voting? my bias is coming from seattle where we have a robust mail-in ballot system, and the process is already quite easy. i'm curious what the conversation would look like around, why do we need this kind of technology? i think the appeal is in

norma's. -- is enormous. in theory, it has largely been attempted in this country for military deployed service members. it could be used for people with disabilities who don't have a lot of ease getting to the polls. if we somehow had a robust online voting system, it would drastically increase voter participation. the bigger question is how we would get there, but i think it there aren't big numbers of who would show up on a given election day. the vote for american idol is online. i would second what kevin just said.

voters can hand to mark a paper , but are unable to use the mail-in ballot system. we do need to keep that in mind. there is the element of resiliency. if there is a natural disaster, and we are going through a pandemic right now, we need to have backup plans, not just one but several, and a digital solution. it provides that element of protection. in addition, provide access to voters who have traditionally been disenfranchised and can't use the traditional method of voting.

selection is all about access. we do need to keep exploring this. >> to keep things interesting, i will push back a little bit. all, i should say i issues.voter access if we could find a way to allow for internet voting that was secure, i think that would be great to be able to offer that option to voters. it's not totally clear to me that that would increase turnout. it's critical to find ways to increase options for voters, to , but if you look

at states that have more early voting, states that have more vote by mail, you don't necessarily see huge increases in turnout. i think there are other issues around why we don't have the turnout in the u.s. that many of us would like to see. it's not clear to me that that is the key reason. at the same time, there's no question that for some voters, in particular voters with be ailities, this might way to make challenges easier to vote. i'm sure we will get into this where there is pretty much a universal opinion by security experts that we are not to be that we need looking for alternatives right

now. >> we will definitely come back to the issues. before we get into that, i wanted to catch people up in case they haven't been following the story. how close are we to online voting? who is on the leading edge of this? i can address that. several jurisdictions around the country have this option available to a very small group of voters, primarily deployed military personnel, u.s. citizens while living overseas, and in a small number of jurisdictions, voters who have some swarm -- some form of disability.

pilots are happening across the country. some of those traditional email, have been fax and which are not secured by any standard, so that is something that needs to be kept in mind when we talk about security. what is the actual process of voting on your phone or online looking like? what does it look like from a user perspective? that. be happy to take couple different approaches. the traditional approach has been to use some sort of a

website. we have been piloting the use of a native smartphone application. ,he initial process is the same as it would be for any absentee voting process. there is a federal form, and there is also a state specific form. your county or election clerk will do a little bit of vetting once you fill that information, and once they are satisfied, there's an option on the form for which method you want to choose. you can choose postal mail. you can choose facts. can choose electronic in some jurisdictions. electronic options would be email, web, or mobile, whatever is being piloted.

you would get an invitation, and depending on the channel, if it's mobile, you would be asked to download an app, doing authentication using your mobile number and email that needs to match what you provided the county clerk, and then you are prompted to do an id verification, taking a picture of a government-issued photo id. then you are asked to take a live video selfie where you blink your eyes, move your face so you know it's real.

after that, you receive your ballot. interface, soible you can dodisabled, that. once you are ready, you confirm your choices. many states would ask you to sign an affidavit. compared by the elections club or the voter registration system. you submit your biometric credential. you get a receipt so you as a protected and quickly check. it also has an identifier in it

which you can use to audit your vote. the jurisdiction gets a copy of your receipt, which then is used to do a pre-tabulation audit, and on election day, a paper ballot is produced. even though you are voting on the phone, it's generating a paper ballot as if you hand marked it. use a background, we ledger system, as well. it ensures everything went through without any tampering. that's one of the ways it works right now. >> we will get back to some of

the verification processes, but i want to go back to the user experience, especially because i know there has been a lot of mistrust. i'm curious what the withrsation has been like voters. how do you make sure voters feel secure using the system? i'm curious to hear from kevin who i know has reported on this. >> i've spoken with a number of voters who used voatz, and overwhelmingly, they had trouble setting it up. trouble.a little there are a couple steps to it. voting is not easy, period, but then they did enjoy it.

i don't know if you want to get into the security issue, as well, but i do think there is enough of a consensus among that that is a much tougher nut to crack. >> is there anything we should add to that, or should we get into security issues? >> i think it is interesting if you look at polling on this, in general, if you ask voters, would they like to vote on their phones, they would say yes, but if you mention russia or security attacks or nationstates attacking our elections, those numbers plummet. i think most people when they are thinking about voting and go to vote aren't necessarily thinking about security, but of course that is a great concern. when you raise it with voters, it is a great concern, as well.

noting thes worth fact we have moved so dramatically away from voting awaythe internet, moving from paperless voting systems, and how much movement there was, both because of national security warnings, but also because there was a public desire to have the paper record that the voter has seen before or thecast filled out machine produced a record and how important that was for people. in 2016, 1-5 voters was voting in a system that didn't have a verified paper record, and this election, it will be 4%. there's been a dramatic move away for this, in part because of the security kearns --

concerns that have been raised. could add a couple of we've also seen a lot of surveys which larry was referring to, and a lot of the feedback, the jurisdictions that have piloted with us have said, , if the first question people want to vote on their phone or online, there is a majority opinion in favor. questionked them a about the risks, people get skeptical. if you follow up a mechanism by which they could audit their vote, the number shoots up again. indicator that people are looking for a measure of trust, whether it is hand-marked paper or digital.

i think that is something that shouldn't be overlooked. >> what are the major security risks, especially compared to traditional voting or mail-in voting? alarmingk the most that i have heard talking with ideaity experts is the that an online voting system can create essentially a central cast.where ballots are with a-case scenario particular voting machine being hacked on election day means that those votes would be spoiled.

if we are talking about a more every vote that was cast on election day or in the lead up to election day, all being spoiled, which is orders of magnitude more, and furthermore, if there is not a paper record that you can do a , the separate recount discrepancy might never be found or might not be found for months or years. states have a couple weeks to certify their election results. it varies by state law. it a presidential election, has to be settled between november and january when we swear in the next president. that is a greater nightmare

scenario than anything i could think of with traditional paper voting. >> that is a good example, kevin. that is a big concern. youe are some concerns, if are voting from personal devices, how secure are those devices? if there is a malware attack that reaches everyone on their iphone, it could potentially have their vote impacted. i do think the point kevin brought up at the end about the paper record that the voter has know in 2020 one of the things -- i think everybody has anxiety about this election, but one of the things that makes me feel better is in all of the battleground states, and as we said earlier, 96% of

the country, if there is some kind of problem, we will be able to go back to that paper record that the voter herself has howed out and has confirmed she intended to vote. that should go a long way to resolving doubts about vote totals. there is the actual security .isk, but also the perception that perception is incredibly important in ensuring that our democracy works. >> a couple of things to add. the whole idea of having a central store for all the votes, if you look at the designs of the mobile voting systems out there, it's something that has been addressed through the use

of security technology. in general, every jurisdiction in the u.s. conducts its own elections. even if you were using the same system across multiple jurisdictions, the data would be logically separated. the second one is, there is a paper ballot being generated here. when people say that paper is the ultimate form of trust, that

is not actually true. with some of these technology methods, you get 100% assurance that not only did your absentee ballot make it, but it was counted and tabulated. i think that should not be overlooked, that technology has the ability to give us more trust than what we have in our system. there are a lot of conflicting thoughts and narratives out there, so definitely that is buildsng where trust over a period of time. gradual,ry slow, iterative process where you can sureit out and make everything is good, and then expand access beyond the group of people where it is being tested. if i can note here, there

have been a couple of studies and security papers on votes. that a.t. one found server would be able to control the total results, if i understand that correctly. researchers disagree on that point. that's essentially a misunderstanding of the architecture of the system. that withcorrelate the existing in person voting system, as well. i have to trust as a citizen what is happening in the elections office, what is happening behind the scenes, and if a malicious actor decides to

throw away the paper ballots, or as we saw arson with the dropbox in california, those votes are never going to be able to be recovered. >> that's not true. >> the reality is, similar threats exist with the in person voting system, as well. is aately, there perception that is created -- is it foolproof? no. that system also has several threats. we shouldn't ignore them. no system is 100% perfect. if you have adequate controls, detection at every step, you can minimize the risk to a level that the system becomes usable. that is what we need to focus on with our digital system, just like the same approach with the in person voting system, as well.

mention thatted to the california example, that instance with the dropbox, they empty drop boxes in california regularly. there are barcodes on the paper ballots, so they are able to contact people. they are able to contact people whose ballots may have been lost, and obviously, that is an exceptional circumstance. you are talking about limited impact with that kind of attack and an ability to recover. questionsave a lot of with the examples that kevin and i gave about how you might recover from those attacks.

one of my concerns -- i have this concern generally, because there aren't enough standards and regulation and oversight in our election systems, but we don't have any standard nationally. i shouldn't say we don't have any national standards for internet voting. we have private vendors who are selling methods of voting to election officials without officials having anything to judge them by. there are no standards the are being set against. at the end of the day, what you are left with is election officials basically having to rely on representations from a vendor, of which there is really no check. there's no way to see if what

the vendor is telling you is true. are there standards they have satisfied? agree theyt people think we are ready for internet voting. we really need to have clear standards before we come anywhere close to having any significant number of people voting on this. >> that's something i've been coming -- i've been curious about as well. i can't imagine that every elections official would be able to independently verify security. what might those regulations look like? how do we bridge that gap to that what is adopted is secure? >> there are some standards put

out by the overseas voter foundation in working with security experts. frankly, i think if we are going to do this in the united states, it should be something like this, the national institute for standards and technology, which helps to design the standards used for voting machines. day, it seemsthe to me far -- there are at least three things that these standards need to satisfy. one is to ensure the privacy of make sure the steps that might be taken to authenticate the voter, but how do we ensure that their privacy is protected? we have a secret ballot in the united states. it's not like banking. we need to make sure that people can't buy or see how other .eople are voting

can't have a system where everybody can vote for everybody. there is a bit of a tension there. most importantly, we need to ensure the integrity of that vote. we need to make sure that in every step of the process, when a person is trying to vote on their phone to when it arrives at the election offices, that it actually represents the vote that the voter intended to cast and somehow do that without the voter or anybody else being able .o see that that, icould add to

definitely agree about the problem with the standards. something we have been looking at for a while. at the same time, the solution is that standards process. in the past, there has been an theve attempt to prevent creation of such standards, so we would agree that that needs to be accelerated. secondly, if you look at some of the piloting approaches, for example the idea of remotely verifying the identity of a voter, which is one of the challenges outlined in the beent -- that has actually

addressed based on standards that have been created. that has been successful in other industries. we brought it to the alexion space. with the formal standardization exist forhich hardware voting machines, that would definitely benefit the helping with the contradictory narrative out there. >> sorry, kevin. you wanted to jump in. >> you go ahead. >> speaking of those pilots, i wonder if you can go over some of those pilots that have happened recently and how they have gone. reportedke kevin has on them. i'm not sure if that has to do with what you were going to jump in with. >> i wanted to know to the

u.s.ctory in the as onlinent fax voting for military or overseas voters, there are places -- it's not common -- where those voters can send a ballot as an email attachment. technically, that is voting online. it is important to note the trajectory recently. in recent years, there was sort of a surge. its virginia offered all of counties, starting with the primaries in the midterms, to use votes, and there were a couple counties out west, which a coupleprompting months ago several federal agencies additional warning about online voting. i can say they only did that

so manyi've talked with people involved. they feared a widespread adoption quickly. there may be some disagreement over whether online voting can ever happen or if it's a decade or so before we can do it safely, but the consensus was afraid, feds were warning against more widespread adoption. >> sorry, what was the original question, if you don't mind repeating that. what the pilots have looked like and how they have gone. like we've been focusing

on this question of security and .rust researchers need to be able to independently test for vulnerabilities. i know that after the west curious,trial, i'm what will it take to build more transparency? fromss kevin and larry, what you've seen, what might you recommend? are you doing anything to improve that transparency? sure. we've been at the forefront. we were the first elections ampany to officially dole out public program, and the intention was to have some form wheremalized process individuals and other entities

who are curious to do research and provide constructive feedback would have a method of doing that. one challenge that applies uniquely to this space is there infrastructure, and then there is test infrastructure. the only difference is it doesn't have live voters on it. try activities on the system. we have to treat it as hostile, and that is what happened in the incident you were alluding to where it's not possible for the system to know the good

intention or bad intention of someone trying to do something malicious. that would get reported to the customer, and it's up to the customer to do whatever they want. that is something that has been but wee of contention, feel there is a lot of information out there, test platforms available, so there is ample opportunity for individuals and organizations to and aidructive research thanrocess rather attempting to stop or derail the process. >> larry, do you want to jump in? out thatth pointing

into a investigation university of michigan student who was researching voting -- they, and votes county did have a program at the time, but only when the investigation started, did they update the terms. >> that's not correct. >> it's in an archive.

>> there was clarification system but the test information has been there from the beginning. this was a live election, and an attempt was made to disrupt a live election. the system caught that attempt, reported it to the customer, as you would expect a system to do, and beyond that is not in our control. if someone does not want to follow the guidelines, it's not something we can control. if you try to tamper with a live hastion system, the system the right to fight back. >> i don't think it is controversial to say, for your

terms to say, no tampering with a live election system, but i think it is worth noting that those were not the published terms at the time the student was referred to the fbi. >> i want to add that is not accurate. >> it literally is. >> it was one year after the attempt happened. >> i want to hear what larry has to say about this. thought is i have a problem with using a system during a live election and using for notan excuse allowing more openness and testing of a system. be, maybe weuld shouldn't be using this system in a live election yet. in washington, d.c., they

decided to withdraw after finding that there were problems with it. unfortunately, we've got things a little bit backwards when we are talking about using this systems -- these systems. >> just to add to that, this is not the first time the system was used. to 50 elections the system had already been used in. exactly following the describe, ityou was never the intention of anybody to use an untested , goingon a live election through a series of smaller elections, and that is the whole notion of pilots. small,on't do these calibrated pilots in the real

field, the process of learning is not significantly innovated. each of these pilots, there have been significant learnings on different fronts. our appeal is the process needs to continue. that process needs to be supported. not everything can be tested in a lab. until we support this process, we will never reach a better state. thinkde from learning, i there have been quite a few criticisms of the online voting system security and just generally whether we are ready to implement the technology. hear what you think of this process. as these systems are rolled out, i wonder if that decreases overall the public trust in

these systems and if there's anything we could be doing to try to repair that overtime. my view is we shouldn't be using them. fbi, eact's the warning that was put out with thisally blunt language year, or the national academy of sciences report, many others saying we are not ready to do this -- i am always concerned confidence and scaring voters unnecessarily, but my own view is, you don't have to be using the systems in

live elections. i don't think we are ready to repair confidence because we shouldn't be. i think what we should be doing is setting up some kind of national standards first, , but nothese systems for use in actual elections where we are putting the actual votes of citizens at risk. a few things. is beings technology piloted, it's an improvement over the existing system. for is the existing option deployed military voters, citizens overseas, and those with disabilities? email or fax. those are not exactly top-of-the-line security systems out there.

with youou agree should do online voting or not, it is significantly safer than that, and that is one reason. the other reason is, as we discussed earlier, not everybody has an opportunity to vote using the traditional system. what we aren't saying is ignore those voters. the technology is here. it is being slowly piloted and tested. in the real world, the risk is adequate. we need to use it. we need to have the voters vote. the question of near universal notement, i think that is true. people who areof

security practitioners for large amounts of time who have been working on different aspects of our industries, and the technology to make this safe is here. it is being used in different aspects. we are just bringing it here, and it is being tested in a thoughtful, graduated manner. i don't think we should believe it's never going to be possible. narrativethe media and the element of public trust, i think -- i would put this on kevin since he represents the media here -- a lot of times the media doesn't have the nuance of reporting these things in a manner which gives people a balanced opinion. detectederability is

in a system, it doesn't mean that your vote is going to be compromised. document was put out this week on how such theoretical vulnerabilities exist in the traditional system. i think folks in the media should also look at that aspect of how some of these new technology nuances are reported. that can play a constructive people onucating the what is important here. we should present the facts to the people. >> i know he has talked with many experts about this, and that is a reporters job. i'm excited to hear kevin's

response to that. of election lot security reporting can overemphasize danger at the expense of realistic use of a system. said, there's not any both sides here. there is the joint assessment of four government agencies. that is the consensus there are too many vulnerabilities. the consensus is near unanimous. i cannot in good faith as a reporter try to present them as equally valid ideas. it's that simple. >> i don't want to speak for

come in, -- kevin, but i don't want to say internet voting is never possible. i also think seeing that there , voters who are overseas, maybe there are some that aren't as secure as -- it's a little bit in theere are people united states who are having trouble getting medicine that they need to. i don't think there are people who argue we should have a drugs that are not approved by any fda that should be sold to people for use with no regulation and no testing.

systems where there are standards, and there is no independent authority testing to ensure it will be secure. what we have are vendors who are --ing it will be concerned it will be secure. since you brought up the , we know theicine idea of clinical trial. they are anonymous. it is a small group of people. these voters have been carefully selected. the risks have been analyzed, and the determination has been made that these people and have been given

options to vote. i think we need to keep that in perspective. ie idea of standards, completely agree, we should be we shouldn't but delay the creation of standards by the very people who criticize the idea of mobile or online voting. let's keep that in perspective. day, i think the we need to keep the voters' need s upfront. there may be a small group of people, but we keep their interests top of mind. elections in this country, technology is produced primarily by the private sector, and the

private sector is pushing this more peopleo that have access, standards get created, and there needs to be more collaboration on that front. you pointed out some of the reports. the whole idea of remote identity proofing, the secure ,lements on the smartphone let's be realistic. let's look the cutting edge technology that is out there. it's actually been used by the military. keep an open focus there on that. not the extent of what these reports are. robust and

comprehensive. using paradigms that are outdated. >> your app has only been around for a few years. accountt takes into standards that have been successfully used in other industries and have been proven to be safe and secure. i don't think you are comparing apples with apples over here. >> that is not the only issue they found. not sure what you are referring to, but the idea of using conjecture without actually using the system, with the system being used in 70-plus elections, every attempt has

been blocked, detected, and thwarted. it has been audited. >> i want to leave some time for the questions. i know you talked about how this makes voting accessible to guys who need options. from mia question armstrong. what could be done to make online voting accessible to voters who don't have access to tech devices or are unfamiliar with the technology? is a great question. one of the jurisdictions we work with has been pioneering this voting. technologypted this to the ipad. the ipad is actually brought to the voter. you can request accommodation,

and an election official will bring the ipad to your home. they train you, and you can privately mark your ballot. if you are a voter, you could drive to the county office and bring the ipad to your parking area. something which is being actively piloted by a jurisdiction with the focus of helping voters who may not be tech savvy or have a personal smartphone, but still could use the great accessibility functions, which have been added. >> is there some way for folks who live in a city and have access to officials -- i'm imagining there are folks

without internet access, how will that be resolved? >> that is a very important question, as well. pilot the most important questions is satellite , and having a shared device. is in some native american jurisdictions where they have traditionally very difficult access to the postal system. that is one action that has been proposed. definitely that is a challenge that needs addressing.

>> another question. i'm curious to hear from all three of you. is this just adding a letter -- lay are of potential failure in the system? that he's going to disagree with this sentiment, so i will lay that out there. my role here as a journalist, i talked to the security experts. i have never found an election technologist who found that that fundamental issues of online voting. it doesn't address the softwareal issues of

in online voting. >> i think a lot of that comes misunderstanding of the system, so i am trying to lay it out very simply. alloption is not solving the problems here. it is not a cure. it is a solution being used as part of a solution to solve specific problems, and the problems are, one is residency. like election architecture that suffers from single points of favor.

let citizens audit their vote. just as you said in the earlier description, any citizen can go into the system, audit their vote confidentially without revealing to anyone else how they voted, and similarly, a group of citizens could independently audit an election withoutis option actually knowing how someone voted. are some small advantages of using the system. it's not a cure for everything. helpsps civilians, and it to provide this audit capability, which a traditional system doesn't have. could you do this without the blockchain? yes.

it's definitely feasible. we haven't found a way to do those things in a manner that is reliable without using this technology. that's why we are piloting and testing it as part of our wider solution. give kevin andto larry a chance. is there anything we haven't touched on or any final thoughts you have to share? my only final thoughts are that the security risks are very serious. got all the intelligence agencies, bipartisan intelligence committee in the warningnd the house,

that the threat of nationstates attacking our elections is real. i do not discount the possibility that we will one day be able to have internet voting that is secure. i think what kevin says is correct. expertependent security says that there is a lot of challenges that we have to overcome before we can do so securely. given how important our elections are and how important trust in those elections is, it's essential that before we start using the systems in an actual election, we have national standards and there's for whatonal standards ,hose systems have to satisfy

testing system for those systems , and all that should be happening before we are using them in actual elections. on allink we've touched the major points. i think it's important to is toght how difficult it audit an election in general. or to do cybersecurity on election system. for instance, we did not know publicly until the mueller ofort that the gr you, part this 2016 interference campaign, had hacked. 40 counties. we did not know until last year, we didn't get a full audit of the eco-book failure.

some say it was hoppers. there was a federal report into that. in 2016.ent was the odd it was not until last year. these things take a lot of time. again, we are talking about states have so little time to certify an election. we would not likely be able to tell exactly what went wrong if something were to go wrong until it is too late. that's the main reason when somebody says, i can bank online, why can't i vote online? have an acceptable level of loss, which they do. banks see hacking attempts every minute. also, you know, you can reverse

charges. you can't really reverse a vote. >> thank you all for joining us today. i wanted to remind us that next week, free speech project. do we need a first amendment to plano? -- 2.0? thank you for joining announcer: c-span's washington journal. everyday we are taking your calls live on the air on the -- on the dayay and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up, the presidential candidates' tax plan. then bob casey examined the upcoming senate vote on judge amy coney barrett's confirmation

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